Morning journal and courier., 1887-05-03
The Turks Religion.


 The religion of the Turks is more or less familiar to everyone It is known that the Mohammedans are first of all monotheists; that is to say they believe in one God only, who in their opinion has no family and who is not divided into twos or thress. Moham- med is the prophet of prophets, the cher ished messenger of Allah; but he is also human prophet who does not share in the di- vine essence, although his name is often ut tered in prayer. The cosmology of the Mus sulmans resembles closely that set forth in Genesis.
 The Koran, or rather the Khourr'am, is re- gardsd by the Mussulmans as Q collection of divine laws promulgated by Mohammed. Khourr'am signifies the book par excellence According to Islam it was compiled from AL lah's great book of secret decrees, and came from heaven page by page. verse by verse, to enlighten the great legislator as to what he should teach mankind. It was always dur ing those hours of doubt and trouble that these divine leaves fell from the skies. The Koran contains one hundred and fourteen chapters, six thousand six hundred and six tysix verses and thirty books.
 The mission of Mohammed was revealed to him in dream in the fortieth year of his age by the archangel Israfil, during the night of the nineteenth Radaman, in the year 609 of the Christian era. From that moment Mohammed, stricken by a holy fear, shut himself up in a cave near the town. He passed his days and nights in meditations, in lasts and in prayers. One night the angel Gabriel appeared to him and ordered him to read. Mohammed objected, saying that he did not know what to read. The angel took him in his arms, pressed him to his bosom with violence, repeated the order twice, three | times, then clasped him closer and closer, put his own lips to the prophets, breathed | into his mouth these sacred words: ''Ikra bi l s-mirrebbike!" 'ERead in the name of thy creator" Mohammed then began to read | A few days after this, while the prophet was praying on the mountain, he again saw the angel of the Lord, who, seated upon throne | in the midst of clouds, uttered these words: 'sYo eyyub ell, mudessiru!" 70 thou that l art enveloped in the celestial robes, rise and preach" Mohammed then began to preach. According to Islam, the angel Gabriel, 1 who had appeared twelve times to Adam, if | ty times to Noah, forty-two times to Abra- | ham, four hundred times to Moses and ten 1 times to Jesus Christ, dazzled Mohammed by his presence more than twenty-four thousand | times. He never appeared to Mohammed except with a face resplendent with glory and light; he shed about him the sweetest perfumes and made himself known by a voice silvery but sweet, like the sound of bells heard in the distance. This particular sound is called salsale in Turkish.
 The presence of the angel Gabriel always filled the soul of the prophet with holy fear. A cold precipitation covered his body, his eyes gleamed in their sockets like two stars in the night. 'The perusal of the holy book" says an Arabic historian, "always I produced a kind of ecstasy followed by g great agitation. He rose and gesticu!ated he became impassioned and then filled with tenderness; he wept and then became calm, according to the sense of each verse of the divine book"
 To-day even, in spite of the deep breaches that the modern spirit has made in the reli l he nf ba rES MJ1a sulman reveres the Koran as the supreme book that includes the essence of all divine law. He never touches it without being ir the prescribed state of purity, without kiss ing it and without putting it to his forehead with all the signs of the most profound devo l ton. The wealthy, when they happen to be religious, make it a duty to adorn the bind l ing with plates of gold or silver set with precious stones. This is not done because they understand it we'll: for the Koran, SC remarkable for it's exaggerated and forid style. is not very intelligible even to learned Turks and Arabians. Its precepts are singu
 larly confused and ambiguous, and it's sub
 jects are arranged with such 1ncoherency
 that it is difficult to follow the sense. More
 over it is accompanied by mass of annota tions and commentaries called mufessirs, the | effect of which is to increase still more tht obscurity of the text.
 l The Koran contains not only all the reli gious laws of Mohammedanism, but also the greater part of the civil social and judicial
 laws in vogue in the Mussulmanic world
 They are several centuries behind moderr
 civilization, and this explains in part why il
 is that the Turks and their government re | rist with so rebellious obstinacy the progress
 of our epoch. It is the Koran that has madt the sultans and the whole Mussulmanic hier
 archy what they are. It is tkis book tha
 nourishes in the Mussulmanic heart the hat
 and contempt bestowed upon Christians
 that maintains from the top to the bottom O | the social scale the seclusion of women, thei
 degradation and their ignorance. It is thi
 book that authorizes polygamy and the slav
 trade. To regenerate the Osmanli it woul
 be necessary to dethrone the Koran. Bu 1 who will dethrene it!